By Amanda Ack, Film Critic
Arbitrage is supposed to be a thriller, but it just doesn’t thrill. At first glance, it’s got all the necessary components: a twisting plot, an uneasy score, high emotions, and low-down deeds. Unfortunately, what it doesn’t have is a heart.
An exhausted-looking Richard Gere stars as “Robert Miller,” a wealthy financier whose rotten behaviour, from shady business dealings to an affair with a coke-snorting gallerist, finally catches up with him in the worst possible way.
To save his skin, he must hide the truth from his wife (Susan Sarandon), his daughter (Brit Marling), and a particularly vengeful NYPD detective (a sublimely slimy Tim Roth), all the while struggling to hold on to his patriarchal identity.
It’s a soulless, gutless movie, thanks in large part to the fact that Gere isn’t the right actor for the job. Playing such an unlikeable character requires a compelling presence, and while his performance is serviceable, he never hits the highs and lows needed to make Miller’s struggle worth watching.
We don’t need to like him, but we do need to care what happens to him, which Gere prevents us from doing by playing it all so close to the chest.
However, it’s not all Gere’s fault. It’s glaringly apparent that writer/director Nicholas Jarecki isn’t particularly interested in the film’s financial aspects, which get a fair amount of screen time but are never fleshed out enough to make them feel important.
As a result, the focus is on the melodrama, leading to some truly clunky exchanges, i.e. “The world is cold” and “You’re going to need a warm coat,” and robbing the characters of any sense of realism.
Just for kicks, I looked up the word “arbitrage.” It has something to do with taking advantage of price differences between markets. The fact that the film never explains this seems pretty indicative of Jarecki’s attitude toward his subject.
Perhaps if he had a bit more confidence in the material – and in the audience’s ability to understand it – he could have made a movie that was accurate and entertaining. As it stands, he’s given us a watered-down Wall Street with a procedural plot, and it lacks the emotional payoff needed to warrant sticking around for the ending.
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